December 9, 2018 Technical infrastructure is never complete. System processes can always run with less overhead or be bin-packed onto fewer machines. Data can be retrieved more quickly and stored at a cheaper cost per terabyte. System design can broaden the gap between failure and user impact. Transport layers can be more secure.

November 24, 2018 Some months ago, a friend recommend Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. I hadn't heard of it before, and as I started poking around I realized that this was the second of a series of three books, and recommendations generally pointed me to start instead with The Timeless Way of Building.

November 18, 2018 Having spent some time earlier this year experimenting with gRPC for defining and integrating server/client pairs, this weekend I wanted to spend a bit of time doing a similar experiment with GraphQL. I couldn't find any particularly complete tutorials for doing this in Python, so I've written up what I hope is a useful collection of notes for someone looking to try out GraphQL in Python.

November 15, 2018 When I was four, I won a cake walk. For thoes who haven't partaken, a cake walk is when a group of folks walk around a path on the floor, and then stop when they are told to stop. Whether you win or lose a cake is entirely out of your hands, it's a matter of timing and position, both of which are out of your control. I've been reflecting lately on the forces which make headcount planning--really just a specialized form of resource allocation--difficult, and perhaps sthe cake walk has something to teach us.